Mariani Violin

This violin was made by Antonio Mariani in Pesaro, Italy around 1650. Believed to be a student of Giovanni Paolo Maggini in Brescia, Mariani probably worked in Pesaro between 1635 and 1695. This instrument with single purfling is in an excellent state of preservation. Historians and scientists have long sought an analytical method to verify dates of manufacture and the age of wood art objects. In contemporary times, these efforts have lead to investigating practical applications of dendrochronology, an experimental technique of dating wood by comparison to growth rings of similar woods. In 1987 this violin was submitted for study in this infant science, with the interesting results that suggest the instrument was made sometime after 1768, or nearly 100 years after Mariani's working life. This vilin has a reproduction label of the Brescian violinmaker Zanetto and is made of a two-piece table of spruce with even medium grain, two-piece back of quarter-cut maple with gently descending irregular fine figure, ribs of plain quarter-cut beech, grafted maple neck with original plain maple pegbox and scroll, and a yellow-brown varnish.

Currently not on view